Monday, July 3, 2017

The Halo Effect, or What are Places of Worship Really Worth to a Community?

$1.5 billion—that’s how much Winnipeg’s places of
worship are worth to the city.

For
Steinbach, that figure is almost $134 million. Brandon is $90 million. Morden
is $23.6 million, Winkler is $69 million. Portage la Prairie rings in at $31
million.

Those
amounts are what’s called the “halo effect,” the value of the social, spiritual
and communal capital that places of worship contribute to their communities
through various kinds of services, events and activities.

The calculator is proved by Cardus, a think tank based in Ontario. The organization
was inspired by studies in the U.S. to do similar research in Canada,
starting in Toronto in 2016.

That
study of ten congregations found that for every dollar of their direct spending
about $4.77 of common good benefit—the “halo effect”—was generated.

Areas where the halo effect was felt included open space, educational programs, magnet effect (drawing people into a community for
weddings, funerals, concerts, conferences and other events), individual impact and community
development.

Additional value
was produced through things such as working with refugees, soup kitchens,
helping the homeless, job training, programs to treat substance abuse, programs
for children, youth and families, community garden plots, hosting concerts and other events,
counselling, recreational activities (gyms and playing fields), operating nursery
schools and day cares, and volunteering in the neighbourhood.

"The
value of religious congregations to the wider community is somewhere in the
order of four to five times of a congregation's annual operating budget,” says
Milton Friesen, who is the Social Cities Program Director for Cardus.

“This
is money that governments don’t need to spend.”

For example, if a congregation
with an annual budget of $250,000 should close, the Halo Project estimates a
city or town would need to come up with about $1.2 million every year to replace
what was lost to the wider community.

Across
Canada, Cardus estimates that places of worship in 19 major cities produce an
economic benefit of $19.9 billion. This includes $1.6 billion in Vancouver, $2
billion in Edmonton, $2.2 billion in Calgary, $489 million in Saskatoon, $6.7
billion in Toronto and $2.1 billion in Montreal.

For
Friesen, this is a new way for Canadians to look at the value of places of
worship. It shows they are “are important parts of the landscape,” and should
not be “ignored when calculating the social capital of a community.”

This
is especially true for those who think places of worship are getting a free
ride when it comes to taxation—that they should pay taxes like any other
institution.

“What
is not considered is the value to others in the community, and the community
itself as a whole,” he says of those who make that argument.

“Imagine what it would cost for cities to
replace the value of what churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and other
places of worship are providing,” he says. “They could never afford it.”

Through
the Halo Project, Friesen hopes to spark a “wider conversation about the role
of religion in Canada,” including what places of worship offer economically, and
to ensure “religion is part of the conversation” when talking about what they contribute
to the social good in this country.

“We
want to put better information into hands of those making decisions” about ways
to serve the various needs of Canadians, he adds.

With many places of worship in danger of closing
across the country today—especially ones located in downtown core areas, where
some of the biggest social needs exist—the work of the Halo Project shows that if a place of worship closes, much more could be lost than many
realize.

Sure, a historic church building might
be saved if it is renovated and replaced by condos, but it’s a good bet the new
residents won’t include a soup kitchen, youth drop-in or substance abuse clinic
in the new building.

To put it another way, maybe the crisis facing organized
religion today isn’t just a concern for those who are religious. The Halo
Project suggests that all Canadians, including Canada’s politicians, might want
to take note.